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Some Humors 
of American History 



BY 

JAMES FORD RHODES 



I0L 



Repbinted from the Proceedings op the American Antiquabian Societt 
for April, 1913. 



WORCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS, U.S.A. 

PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETY 

1913 



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THE DAVIS PRESS 
Worcesteb, Massachusetts 



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JUL 1 i 1»W 






SOME HUMORS OF AMERICAN HISTORY 



In Carlyle's correspondence and in the text of his 
"Frederick the Great" there is much bewailing of the 
amount of drudgery he has been obliged to go through to 
get at the facts with which he may construct his narra- 
tive. If I remember correctly, the lack of indexes to Ger- 
man books is one of his grievous complaints and in the 
midst of his relation of the ending of the First Silesian 
War, studying long-winded despatches, which are exceed- 
ingly stiff reading, he thus breaks out: "O reader, what 
things have to be read and carefully forgotten; what 
mountains of dust and ashes are to be dug through and 
tumbled down to Hades to disengage the smallest frac- 
tion of truly memorable! Well if, in ten cubic miles of 
dust and ashes you discover the tongue of a shoe-buckle 
that has once belonged to a man in the least heroic, and 
wipe your brow invoking the supernal and the infernal 
gods." "May the infernal gods deal with these dip- 
lomatic dealings and reduce Dryasdust to limits!" 

I can well imagine some enthusiastic American ad- 
mirer reading Carlyle's remark in his fourth volume, 
"The incalculable Yankee nation itself biggest phenome- 
non (once thought beautifullest) of these Ages!" and 
at once saying: "Do, Mr. Carlyle, write the history of 
our Civil War." To which the Sage of Chelsea would 
reply in words actually used by him: "No war ever 
raging in my time was to me more profoundly foolish- 
looking." It was a "smoky chimney which had taken 
fire." 

Had Carlyle lived as long as Ranke, practically writing 



up to his dying day, and had our Civil War attracted 
him, he might have been led to admire the easy and 
methodical arrangement of our historical materials, the 
accessibility of our libraries and the various helps at 
hand which render the lot of the American historian an 
easy one compared with that of his European compeer, 
who has to pore over books without indexes and delve 
among manuscripts in dusty archives. And what is 
more to the point connected with the subject of my pres- 
ent paper, I think he would have enjoyed the many 
humors which cannot escape the investigator. It is 
not necessary to consider here why the people of one 
nation fail to appreciate the humor of another. That 
subject has been discussed with wide intelligence and 
excellent temper by John Graham Brooks, who mentions 
one of the most striking instances: that of Alphonse 
Daudet doing his best to laugh over the pages of Mark 
Twain, but always in vain. Our newspapers and after- 
dinner speakers have made merry over the non-apprecia- 
tion of American humor by Englishmen and I hope that 
this merriment has reached its culmination in Chauncey 
Depew's thread-bare and not very funny story of "What 
is the matter with the huckleberry pie?" Certainly a 
country which has produced Shakespeare and Dickens 
and supported Punch (not to mention a dozen other 
examples) has no apology to offer to any other country 
touching any deficiency in its sense of humor. Never- 
theless, as Americans generally appreciate the fun in 
Scott and in Burns, it has always seemed to me that the 
Scotch understood our somewhat grotesque variety of 
humor better than did their countrymen south of the 
Tweed. Bryce wrote that "humor is a commoner gift 
in America than elsewhere" and the Americans "are 
as conspicuously the purveyors of humor to the nine- 
teenth century as the French were the purveyors of wit 
to the eighteenth" and it seems to me that if his brother 
Scotchman Carlyle could have been attracted to the 
history of our country he might, if not tormented by his 
dyspepsia, have seen some humor in the instances that 



I have collected together for the purpose of our examina- 
tion this morning. 

I shall begin with Benjamin Harrison and work my 
chronology backwards. One of the comic papers, think- 
ing it had lighted upon a bit of keen satire pictured Presi- 
dent Harrison in the effort of wearing his grandfather's 
hat. The hat was at first too big for the presidential 
head and Harrison's head and body kept growing smaller 
and smaller as the criticism of the paper increased in 
sharpness and injustice, so that the disproportion be- 
tween his head and grandfather's hat was immense. 
This caricature was widely spread so that it may be said 
to have pervaded the life of the people. Now for an 
incident which was told me by Paul Leicester Ford. A 
townsman and old friend of Harrison's came on from 
Indianapolis for a visit to Washington, and his first duty 
and pleasure was to call upon the President. Going to 
the White House he said to the chief usher, I want to 
see President Harrison. At once came the reply, "The 
President cannot be seen to-day," when the Indianapolis 
citizen exclaimed, "Good Heavens, has he got so small 
as that!" 

The implication of the comic paper that Benjamin 
Harrison was inferior in ability to his grandfather, Wil- 
liam Henry, was decidedly incorrect. Benjamin was 
much the abler of the two. William Henry Harrison 
owed his election as president to having gained a victory 
over the British and Indians during the War of 1812 and 
to his living in a log cabin and drinking hard cider. He 
believed that polished American eloquence meant the 
use of undigested bits of classic lore out of Plutarch and 
the Encyclopaedias; and his inaugural address was full 
of Roman consuls, of the Curtii, the Decii, Camillus, 
Caesar, Antony, Brutus and the rest. What the address 
was before Daniel Webster, the prospective Secretary 
of State, used his blue pencil on it, must be left to con- 
jecture. Webster was late in arriving at a dinner party 
and after his apology he replied to the remark of his host 
that he looked tired and to the question whether any- 



6 

thing had happened. "Something indeed has hap- 
pened," said the great man, "I have had a very stiff 
job. I have killed no less than seventeen Roman pro- 
consuls." 

Van Buren, whom William Henry Harrison succeeded 
in the White House was a New Yorker, fond of the good 
things of life, and, during the campaign of 1840, the 
simple diet of Harrison was contrasted with the soupe 
a la reine, pate de foie gras and dinde desosse, on which 
his competitor was supposed to dine or sup in the so- 
called President's Palace. Harrison undoubtedly in- 
herited the steward, cook and kitchen of Van Buren, 
but, after a short while, so the story goes, he wearied of 
the food and cooking and demanded such a dinner as he 
was accustomed to eat in his log cabin at North Bend 
on the Ohio River. Boiled corned beef and cabbage 
was the repast. He ate immoderately. He had indi- 
gestion, then a chill, followed by bilious pneumonia of 
which he died one month after his inauguration. 

Webster, being late at dinner, calls to mind a circum- 
stance in the career of another great lawyer, William M. 
Evarts. I must premise that no word so well describes 
Andrew Johnson's course as President as " asinine." 
As everybody knows, there was a fierce quarrel between 
him and Congress and in the end he was impeached by 
the House of Representatives. Evarts was one of his 
counsel and the preparation of the defence in the trial 
before the Senate fell largely to him. Working on it 
all of a Sunday, on coming to Senator Sumner's to din- 
ner, he excused his breach of the commandment by say- 
ing, "Is it not written that if thine ass falleth into a pit, 
it is lawful to pull him out on the Sabbath day?" 

Andrew Johnson suggests his fierce vindictive and 
unrelenting opponent, Thaddeus Stevens, who was 
characterized by sardonic humor. The story has been 
often told, but it will bear repetition, as it brings Stevens 
into connection with Lincoln. When Lincoln was hesi- 
tating, in regard to the appointment of Cameron as his 
Secretary of War, Stevens went to him and protested 



against the appointment in no mealy-mouthed phrase. 
"You don't mean to say," said Lincoln, "that Cameron 
would steal?" "No," said Stevens, "I don't think he 
would steal a red-hot stove." Lincoln could not for- 
bear telling this remark to Cameron, which naturally 
made him very angry and led him to protest to Stevens in 
hot indignation, saying a gross injury was done him 
and that Stevens must retract the offensive phrase and 
this he agreed to do. The next scene is between Stevens 
and Lincoln. "Mr. Lincoln, why did you tell Cameron 
what I said to you? " "I thought, " was the reply, ' ' that 
it was a good joke and I didn't think it would make him 
mad." "Well," said Stevens, "he is very mad and 
made me promise to retract. I will now do so. I 
believe I told you that I didn't think he would steal a 
red-hot stove. I now take that back. " 

In any dissertation upon the humors of American 
history Abraham Lincoln must bulk large, as his keen 
sense of humor and his aptness at illustrative anecdotes 
are known to everyone who knows his name. In him 
pathos and humor were so blended that Petroleum V. 
Nasby, the humorist, thought Lincoln's the saddest 
face he had ever looked upon; and Lincoln mixed fun 
with seriousness when he decided upon the Proclamation 
of Emancipation, the carrying out of which, the giving 
freedom to 4,000,000 human beings led Mommsen to 
declare that our Civil War was "the mightiest struggle 
and most glorious victory as yet recorded in human 
annals. " 

In July, 1862, Lincoln submitted to his Cabinet a 
proclamation freeing the slaves, but on an objection of 
Seward, which seemed to the President to have great 
weight, he laid it aside until the Union armies should 
gain a victory. It seemed to both Lincoln and Seward 
that such an edict ought to have the support of military 
success. From the cabinet meeting of July 22, when the 
President announced tentatively his purpose, to that of 
September 22 when he told his advisers he should issue 
an irrevocable decree, the working of his mind is open to 



8 

us. While he had come to a conclusion, he showed the 
true executive quality as well as the fair mind, ready to 
change for sufficient reason, in not regarding the policy 
of thus hitting slavery, as absolutely and stubbornly 
determined until it had been officially promulgated. He 
endeavored by correspondence, through formal inter- 
views and private conversation to get all the light pos- 
sible to aid him in deciding when the proper moment 
had come to proclaim freedom to the slaves. 

Turning the question over in his mind, he settled his 
doubts; he believed that a proclamation of freedom was 
a military necessity and that the plain people of the 
North would see it as he did. As the days went on, he 
was confirmed in the conclusion which he had come to 
in July and he felt that public sentiment was growing 
in that direction. In the dark hours following the second 
defeat of Bull Run and Lee's invasion of Maryland, he 
did not falter. "When the rebel army was at Frederic" 
(Sept. 6-10, 1862) he afterwards said, "I determined, as 
soon as it should be driven out of Maryland to issue a 

proclamation of emancipation I said nothing 

to anyone, but I made the promise to myself and to my 
Maker." Antietam was won. Lee had crossed the 
Potomac into Virginia. 

A point in the history of civilization was the meeting, 
Sept. 22, 1862, of the cabinet council at the White House. 
After some general talk, the President took the word and 
read from Artemus Ward's book a chapter "High Handed 
Outrage at Utica. " This has always seemed to me a 
remarkable circumstance. There can be no question 
that Lincoln was very much impressed with the serious- 
ness of the act he was about to perform. His summer 
had been full of perplexity and disappointment. Until 
Antietam, he had had nothing but military failure. 
McClellan's Peninsular campaign had come to naught. 
Pope, whom he had thought might prove a fit commander 
for the Army of the Potomac, had been overwhelmingly 
defeated at Bull Run and Lee's Army, flushed with vic- 
tory, had threatened Washington, Baltimore and Harris- 



9 

burg. From a Confederate army in Kentucky, Cincin- 
nati had been in imminent danger of capture and at the 
time of this Cabinet meeting Louisville stood in jeopardy. 
The President had hoped that McClellan would destroy 
Lee's army. The victory at Antietam simply turned 
back the Confederate invasion. It is extraordinary 
that a man of deep feeling who had had so much distress, 
who knew that the actors in the great scenes of history 
ushered them in with gravity — generally with pomp 
and prayer — it is extraordinary, I say, that he should 
have begun his cabinet meeting, which he felt might be 
one of the most solemn events of his country's history, 
in a manner so grotesque. I confess to having been 
susceptible to Artemus Ward's humor. It would have 
been unnatural for a boy brought up in the fifties in the 
Puritanical town of Cleveland to be otherwise. Life 
was as serious there as in the ordinary New England com- 
munity and the Saturday Evening Plain Dealer, of which 
Artemus Ward was local editor and in which he published 
weekly one of his articles, brought joy to the household. 
Those articles seemed very funny then and I can read 
some of them now with a slight degree of amusement. 
In making my study of this famous cabinet meeting I 
tried to call up my youthful delight in Artemus Ward 
and in some such mood read Lincoln's introduction to 
his solemn announcement. Whether it be that there is 
really no humor in it or whether it be disgust at the 
juxtaposition of this silly showman's talk with the 
sublime words of the proclamation I can see no fun in it. 
The article jars upon me as a discord in a Beethoven 
symphony does upon a lover of music. Artemus Ward's 
contribution to this cabinet meeting is brief and the 
reading of it entire will in a measure bring back the scene 
when eight grave men sat around the council board. 
As a word of explanation, I must say that much of the 
fun in Artemus Ward consists in his manner of misspelling 
words. I cannot pretend to give an idea of this in my 
pronunciation but I imagine that Lincoln in his reading 
represented this with exactness. 



10 

I shall now read Artemus Ward's 

High-Handed Outrage at Utica. 

"In the Faul of 1856, I showed my show in Utiky, a 
trooly grate sitty in the State of New York. 

The people gave me a cordyal recepshun. The press 
was loud in her prases. 

1 day as I was givin a descripshun of my Beests and 
Snaiks in my usual flowry stile what was my skorn and 
disgust to see a big burly f ellor walk up to the cage con- 
tainin my wax Aggers of the Lord's Last Supper, and 
cease Judas Iscarrot by the feet and drag him out on the 
ground. He then commenced fur to pound him as hard 
as he cood. 

'What under the son are you abowt?' cried I. 

Sez he, 'What did you bring this pussylanermus cuss 
here fur?' & he hit the wax figger another tremenjis 
blow on the hed. 

Sez I, 'You egrejus ass, that air's a wax figger — a re- 
presentashun of the false 'Postle.' 

Sez he, 'That's all very well fur you to say, but I 
tell you, old man, that Judas Iscarrot can't show hisself 
in Utiky with impunerty by a darn site!' with which 
observachun he kaved in Judassis hed. The young 
man belonged to 1 of the first famerlies in Utiky. I 
sood him, and the Joory brawt in a verdick of Arson in 
the 3d degree." 

Lincoln, as Chase tells the story in his diary, thought 
the article very funny and enjoyed the reading of it 
greatly; the members of the cabinet except Stanton 
laughed with him. The President then fell into a grave 
tone and told of the working of his mind on the slavery 
question since the July meeting. ' ' The rebel army is now 
driven out of Maryland," he said, "and I am going to 
fulfill the promise I made to myself and my God. I 
have got you together to hear what I have written down. 
I do not wish your advice about the main matter; for 
that I have determined for myself." 1 He read his great 



1 Chase's Diary (Warden), p. 481. 



11 

proclamation of freedom: "On the first day of January 
in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and 
sixty three, all persons held as slaves within any State 
or designated part of a State the people whereof shall 
then be in rebellion against the United States shall be 
then, thenceforward and forever free." All the mem- 
bers of the cabinet, except Blair, approved substantially 
the proclamation and his objection was on the score of 
expediency not of principle. On the morrow, Sept. 23, 
1862, this edict, this mark of the world's progress, was 
given to the country. 

Lincoln has suffered much from having jokes ascribed 
to him which he never perpetrated and the most cruel 
one I have ever heard was by Robert Ingersoll, the high- 
priest of Agnosticism in his really great oration on Abra- 
ham Lincoln. The proclamation of Sept. 22, 1862 
needed a supplement to be issued January 1, 1863 and 
Robert Ingersoll related the circumstance somewhat in 
this wise: "Lincoln read to his Cabinet the draft he 
had determined on and at the conclusion of the reading, 
Secretary Chase, a very religious man, said, 'It is all 
right, Mr. President, except that in my judgment there 
ought to be something about God in it. ' ' Oh, no, ' said 
Lincoln, 'that would spoil it.'" Ingersoll, for the sake 
of raising a laugh, gave his audience a wickedly wrong 
impression. Of course, Lincoln not only made no such 
remark but he could not have made it. No one who 
studies his character can fail to be impressed with his 
sincere theism and the whole story of the proclamation 
as I have told it shows his reliance on a superior power. 
There was no cant about Lincoln's religion and his end- 
ing of the January 1st proclamation in accordance with 
Chase's suggestion was a sincere expression. "And upon 
this act," he wrote, "I invoke the considerate judgment 
of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God." 

Another anecdote fastened upon Lincoln always gives 
me a painful feeling. It is assigned to the spring of 1863 
when Grant was beginning his campaign against Vicks- 
burg. It will be remembered that, up to this time, all 



12 

the generals of the Army of the Potomac, and some else- 
where, had proved failures and that on the whole the 
most conspicuous success had been Grant. Some 
zealous persons came to see Lincoln and demanded Grant's 
removal because he drank too much whiskey. As the 
story goes, Lincoln asked what brand he drank, because 
he added, "If I knew what brand of whiskey he drinks, 
I would send a barrel or so to some other generals." 
I cannot believe the story, because there were some seri- 
ous subjects on which Lincoln would not jest and this, 
I think, was one of them, for both he and his Secretary 
of War, Stanton, were at this time much disturbed at 
the reports of Grant's intemperance. The literature 
of the subject attests this anxiety in some degree and the 
traditions put it beyond doubt. One of these I will 
mention. A rich man in Cleveland, being much wrought 
up over the disasters of the Northern armies and par- 
ticularly affected by the gloom following Fredericksburg 
and Chancellorsville, seriously considered the idea of 
converting a part of his property into gold and sending 
it to England. The pecuniary sacrifice would be so 
great and the lack of patriotism so apparent that, before 
coming to a decision, he went on to Washington to look 
the ground over and consult an intimate friend who was 
very close to Stanton. His friend put the situation 
before him in a nut shell: "If we can take Vicksburg, " 
he said, "we shall win and if we can keep Grant sober, we 
shall take Vicksburg. " 

It is a far cry from Lincoln back to Henry Clay, but 
no account of humors in American history can avoid 
touching upon the virulent party and personal contest 
between Clay and Andrew Jackson which began as early 
as 1825 and lasted until Jackson's death. The bitter- 
ness between the principals was communicated to their 
adherents and no other partisanship in our history has 
been so heated and so long-enduring. Miss Murfree 
refers to this, in her story of the "Prophet of the Great 
Smoky Mountains," in an account of a significant 
discussion between two old men of Tennessee, which 



13 

took place many years after the deaths of both Jackson 
and Clay. Both of these old Tennesseeans were past 
seventy, one was a paralytic, whose every word and 
motion was accompanied with a convulsive gasp and 
jerk; the other, a trifle younger than his associate was 
saturnine and lymphatic. They belonged to the same 
family, lived in the same house in the mountainous 
region of East Tennessee and passed their days sitting 
in rude armchairs on either side of a huge fireplace. An 
actual political contest between Republican and Demo- 
crat was being discussed by the younger members of 
the family and as the old paralytic listened, his eye blaz- 
ing, his chin quivering, his pipe shaking in his palsied 
hand, he exclaimed with intense bitterness: "The 
stren'th an' the seasonin' hev all gone out in the Ian'! 
Whenst I was young, folks knowed what they war an' 
they let other folks know too, ef they hed ter club it 
inter 'em. But them was Old Hickory's times [let me 
remind you that Andrew Jackson was called Old Hick- 
ory by his admirers]. Waal, waal, we aint a-goin' ter 
see Old Hickory no more — no — more!" 

This irritated the other old man, who said with as- 
perity: "I hopes not, I hopes we'll never see no sech 
tormentin' old Dimmycrat agin. But law! I needn't 
fret my soul, Henry Clay shook all the life out'n him five 
years afore he died. Henry Clay made a speech agin 
Andrew Jackson in 1840 what forty thousan' people 
kem ter hear. Thar was a man fur ye ! He had a tongue 
like a bell; pears like ter me I kin hear it yit when I 
listens right hard. By Gum! that day he tuk the stiffen- 
in' out'n Old Hickory! Surely, surely he did! Ef I 
thought I war never a-goin' ter hear Old Hickory's name 
agin I'd tune up my ears fur the angel's quirin'. I was 
born a Republikin'; I growed ter be a good Whig an' I'll 
die a Republikin. Ef that aint religion I dunno what 
air! That's the way I hev lived an' walked afore the 
Lord. An' hyar in the evenin' o' my days I hev got ter 
set alongside o' this hyar old cansarn an' hear him jow 
about'n Old Hickory from morning to night. Ef I had 



14 

knowed how he war goin' ter turn out bout'n Old 
Hickory in his las' days I wouldn't hev let my darter 
marry his son, thirty-five years ago. I knowed he war 
a Dummycrat but I never knowed the stren'th o' the 
failin' till I war called on ter 'sperunce it." (Prophet 
of the Great Smoky Mountains, p. 87.) 

I ought never to try to read these dialect stories as so 
much of their force is lost if one cannot make some at- 
tempt at rendering them true to life, but the necessity 
of my narrative compels me to give another. As an 
advocate of Henry Clay has been heard, it is proper now 
that we should hear from an adherent of Andrew Jack- 
son, but before he takes the stump it will be worth our 
while to refresh our memory concerning the Battle of 
New Orleans, which was fought on January 8, 1815. 
Eight thousand disciplined British troops, well-officered, 
well-equipped, largely Peninsula veterans, confident in 
themselves and their commander had been sent across 
the water to take New Orleans. Their commander was 
Pakenham, a brother-in-law of Wellington, and Welling- 
ton believed such a force competent to capture New 
Orleans or to rout any American army he ever heard of. 
On this 8th day of January, the British forces attacked 
the American earth works behind which were 4,000 to 
4,500 motley troops, but magnificent marksmen, backs- 
woodsmen, Indian fighters, under the command of 
Andrew Jackson. The rout of the British was complete, 
their commander was killed and their loss was 2,036 
while the American casualties were but 71. I must add 
that it was the popular though erroneous belief that 
Jackson and his men fought behind cotton bales. This 
battle pushed Jackson to the fore, made him a great 
figure in American politics, the leader and dictator of 
the Democratic party and president for two terms. The 
8th of January is still celebrated by the Democrats as 
Saint Jackson's day. 

We are now ready to hear from the orator who was 
running for the office of constable in a town in the South- 
west; "Whar, my enlightened friends of the hundred and 



15 

sixty-sixth militia district," asked the stump orator, 
"was Dan'l Webster in the battle of Noo Orleenes? He 
wur nowhar. He wur a livin' down to Bosting in a brown 
stone house with a marble facade out of the Quincy quar- 
ries, a drawin' of cheques on Nicholas Biddle's Bank and 
nary darn cent of 'em paid when they com' doo. That's 
whar he wur. And Henry Clay, my enlightened friends 
of the Hundred Sixty-Sixth Militia district? Wur he 
ter the battle of Noo Orleanes? He wurnt. He wur 
a woggulatin' from Paris to Vienna a playin' of draw 
poker with all the princes and potentates of Europe and 
nary an ace in the pack. That's whar he wur. But, my 
enlightened friends, whar wur Andrew Jackson? Wur 
he ter the battle of Noo Orleenes? He wur. He wur 
a ridin' up and down on a bobtail Arabian out of Eclipse, 
a wavin' of a crooked sabre, up to his armpits in blood 
and mud, and a givin' of the British thunder; the Genius 
of his Country a holding of her aegis over his head, cotton 
bales paravenerring in front to pertect him from every 
danger and the Great American Eagle with the stars 
and stripes in her beak, a soarin' aloft in the blue em- 
pyrean, cryin' 'Hail Columbia!' He wur thar and I 
wur with him." (Sala's " Diary in America," vol. 2, 
p. 108.) 



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